The Pacific, 'Part Six': Peleliu gets worse

"The Pacific."A review of "The Pacific" chapter six coming up just as soon as I count bandages...

"History is full of wars fought for a hundred reasons. But this war - our war - well, I want to believe - I have
to believe - that if I step across that airfield, every man that's
wounded, every man I lose, that it's all worthwhile because our cause
is just. 'Course, if a just cause came with hot food and some water,
that'd be okay, too." -Ack-Ack Haldane

I once
interviewed CBS football analyst Phil Simms the day after a game where
a punt returner got completely crushed by a defender a split-second
after he caught the ball. We talked about that play, and I marveled
that any human being could do a job where such a thing is required.
Simms, who knew a thing or 12 about getting hit from his days as the
Giants' quarterback, looked at me with the disappointment of a man
who's spent a lifetime talking with people who don't understand the
game he used to play, and said, "There's no choice. You don't think
about it; you just do it, because that's the game."

I thought
a lot about Simms' comment as I watched the Marines try to cross the
Peleliu airfield in Part Six. Obviously, getting shot at by the
Japanese is infinitely more dangerous than getting sacked by Reggie
White, but watching the brutal airfield sequence, all I could think
was, "How do men do this? How do they just run across a this killing
zone?" And then I thought, like Simms said, "What other choice do they
have? These are their orders, and this is what men in combat do."

"Part
Six," directed by Tony To and shot once again by Remi Adefarasin,
featured perhaps the most intense combat yet in "The Pacific." We got a
taste of the savagery of Peleliu last week, but a lot of that episode
was spent with the men enjoying some downtime on Pavuvu. Here, there's
no let-up, no escape, unless you're someone like Leckie or Runner, who
get hurt badly enough to be sent away on a Navy ship, but not killed.

Leckie
gets taken out of action (leaving Sledge as the only one of our main
characters still in the field), and there's that great moment on the
ship where he's relieved to find Runner and says that he didn't abandon
him, but got hurt looking for a corpsman to save him, and Runner tells
him he doesn't need to say anything. Because that's another thing about
being in combat with someone: you know them better than almost anyone
else on the planet, and you know if they're the type who would run out
of fear or the type who would run for help. By this point, Runner and
Leckie have been through so much together that there's no doubt in
Runner's mind what Leckie was up to. Very nice work by James Badge
Dale, and by Keith Nobbs as Runner.

While Leckie's war is over
for now, Sledge's is only getting worse, just as old buddy Sid feared,
even as he tried to convince Eugene's parents otherwise on his return
to Alabama.

As Sledge's unit moves across the airfield and
then into the hills on Peleliu, we see again and again how savage, and
how random, combat can be. Sledge goes back to help the fallen Snafu,
and in the process another Marine dies while carrying the mortar that
Sledge put down. At night, one Marine is so emotionally scarred from
what he's seen so far on the island that he can't stop screaming, even
when restrained and injected with morphine. The danger of giving away
their position (and, though it's not exactly stated, of spurring panic
in the rest of the men) becomes so great that the Marines have no
choice but to kill the poor bastard with a shovel. (This really
happened in front of Sledge.)

As Sledge, no longer innocent after only a few days of action, reluctantly tells Snafu, "I guess better him than all of us."

Yet
despite isolated incidents of panic, brutal conditions, a lack of
supplies and unbelievably fierce fighting in the daytime, most of the
men aren't cracking under all of this. When one of Sledge's buddies
admits he still has a little bit of precious water in his canteen, he
passes it around, and every man takes only his small share. When the
Marines aboard a transport vehicle won't take away the wounded men from
Sledge's unit, the officers stand in front of the truck to block its
passage until the wounded are loaded aboard. And when Sledge's CO
Ack-Ack Haldane realizes his orders are going to get his men killed, he
heads back to battalion and gets them changed.

If you go into
a battle as horrible as the one on Peleliu, you don't always have a
choice about where you have to go and what obstacles you have to get
past. But if you're able to keep your wits about you, and are very
lucky indeed, maybe you can make it to the other side in one piece.

Some other thoughts

•
As mentioned above, this one was directed by Tony To, who's been a part
of the Tom Hanks/HBO gang going back to "From the Earth to the Moon."
Fienberg interviewed James Badge Dale before the miniseries began, and
Dale gives a great account of the day everyone on set warned him, "Tony's To's gonna blow you up." Fair warning: the interview gives away some things about Leckie post-Peleliu, which we won't be discussing here.

•
The green screen shot at the end on the boat is the first effect of the
series that doesn't look all that convincing. Given how incredible the
rest of the hour looks, I'll allow it.

• Bit by bit, we've
been seeing the shots from the opening title sequence turn up in the
episodes, and here we get a big one, with Leckie making his way back
across the airfield while gravel and debris flies all around.

•
Sledge actually picked up the "Sledgehammer" nickname in basic
training, but it was still a good moment for the slightly fictionalized
Sledge and Snafu for Snafu to bestow it upon him here as semi-stated
thanks for saving his life. (And in real life, the basic training
nickname was half-mocking; here, it's a compliment to his fortitude in
battle.)

• And speaking of nicknames, nice callback for Runner to call Leckie "Peaches" when they find each other on the ship.

Once
again, as alluded to above, we're not going to talk about events that
took place after what's depicted in this episode, and specifically
treating the fates of Sledge, Leckie and Basilone as spoilers. But with
that in mind, what did everybody else think?